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For some it is a Great Idea and for some they may never use it. For those who will use it, it is worth a lot especially if you have ever lost all of your Recordings on a DVR where the hard drive failed.

I have 7 DVRs, 3 of which Backup the other 4 DVRs in case of hard drive failure. I would love the ability to offload my Recordings so if one of my DVRs experiences a hard drive failure, I can simply Replace the drive and then load those archived recordings back onto the new drive and I am back in business.

Perhaps you would be interested if a program would do transfer selected show(s) between drives ?

Perhaps you would be interested if a program would do transfer selected show(s) between drives ?

That would work Nicely Mr. Smith but not for everyone who does not have the Luxury of having multiple DVRs to Back Up their other DVRs.

I think it would be Nice if I just could Offload my Recordings to my 2 TB USB External Drive for safekeeping and then later on if I needed to after a hard drive crash I could replace the drive and download those recordings that would be Great.

Perhaps you would be interested if a program would do transfer selected show(s) between drives ?

We've been fighting that battle for years. Finally, it looks like D* is taking notice of the fact that many more people have external devices and is willing to give us an option to use "something" to back up valued recordings. Still not what I (and many others) want, but it is a first step.

Geez, maybe they'll even notice how many of us want BBCA in HD!

If I were the decision maker at D*, I'd be giving the customers what they want at every opportunity and bury the competition. They want to be the leader in providers? Lead! Beat the competition down so badly that no one would even consider another provider. No, I'm not a socialist....

That would work Nicely Mr. Smith but not for everyone who does not have the Luxury of having multiple DVRs to Back Up their other DVRs.

I think it would be Nice if I just could Offload my Recordings to my 2 TB USB External Drive for safekeeping and then later on if I needed to after a hard drive crash I could replace the drive and download those recordings that would be Great.

Don't know if it's doable or feasible but that would be Nice!!!

rich:

check out the Hauppauge PVR 1212. component video and optical audio from the D* HRxx to the Hauppage. Then USB from the Hauppage to your desk or laptop. Will be able to offload HD content and edit out commercials etc. Somewhat time consuming. You can then burn to dvd or blu ray...Regards...

I just ordered two hard drives a 3TB (HITACHI Deskstar H3IK30003272SW (0S03208) 3TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5") to see if its possible to break the 2.2TB limit and the (Western Digital AV-GP WD20EVDS 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s) in case the 3TB doesn't work. I should get them on wednesday. Will report back ASAP. Regards...

I just ordered two hard drives a 3TB (HITACHI Deskstar H3IK30003272SW (0S03208) 3TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5") to see if its possible to break the 2.2TB limit and the (Western Digital AV-GP WD20EVDS 2TB 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s) in case the 3TB doesn't work. I should get them on wednesday. Will report back ASAP. Regards...

It's gonna take you a while to get to 2TBs of content. Make sure you do not set all recordings to "Keep until I delete". When I tried it, and filled mine up, I had content dropping off to make room for other content. This is what you want to watch for. If you get past 2TB (and you really won't know exactly when, the hours are not the only consideration, the content of each program recorded also plays a part in the overall size of the content), and nothing drops off to make room for more content, you will have exceeded the expected limit.

I did feel that when the programs started to drop off my 2TB RAID setup that I could have gone further. How much further, I have no idea. You'll also have to do a lot of rebooting or the HR will slow up very badly.

To make a guesstimate, I'd use 500-550 hours as the 2TB limit. After you reach that point, keep a constant eye on it, when it starts dropping programs off to make room for more programs, you've reached the limit. At that point, count up all the hours and let us know. That's about all the advice I can give you. I really felt that I could have exceeded the 2TBs if I'd had a larger capacity.

I imagine Directv realized that Exceeding the 2 TB Limit would cause Sluggishness and a General Slowing Down of the DVR because the CPU would be Overworked and couldn't properly handle all of the tasks, so perhaps that is why they set that Kernel Limatation.

I imagine Directv realized that Exceeding the 2 TB Limit would cause Sluggishness and a General Slowing Down of the DVR because the CPU would be Overworked and couldn't properly handle all of the tasks, so perhaps that is why they set that Kernel Limatation.

I just received the 3TB hard drive for this experiment. I wonder if the people following this thread could help me. I only upgraded my hr21 once to a 1.5TB and that was awhile ago. I really don't want to lose all my programs that are on that 1.5TB drive now by having the dvr format it by mistake.

Before copying I know I have to install the new drive into the dvr, let it format and then do a graceful power down. I believe I have to do a graceful power down with the original drive. Is that correct? if so (and especially if this doesn't work) can I just put the original drive back into the dvr and power up? It won't format my drive will it? regards....

I imagine Directv realized that Exceeding the 2 TB Limit would cause Sluggishness and a General Slowing Down of the DVR because the CPU would be Overworked and couldn't properly handle all of the tasks, so perhaps that is why they set that Kernel Limatation.

Let's take a shot at some scientific reasoning about this:

How many files are we talking? I'm guessing not more than 300. Doesn't sound like it would swamp a directory cache. The data block size could be relatively large; limiting the size of the bitmap.

It may seem insurmountable when you apply the constructs available in Windows, but when you use something a lot more scalable, it doesn't have to bring the hardware to its knees.

Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. -- JFK

I just received the 3TB hard drive for this experiment. I wonder if the people following this thread could help me. I only upgraded my hr21 once to a 1.5TB and that was awhile ago. I really don't want to lose all my programs that are on that 1.5TB drive now by having the dvr format it by mistake.

Before copying I know I have to install the new drive into the dvr, let it format and then do a graceful power down. I believe I have to do a graceful power down with the original drive. Is that correct? if so (and especially if this doesn't work) can I just put the original drive back into the dvr and power up? It won't format my drive will it? regards....

You should never get an HDD reformatted whether you put it back in/on the original HR or another one. All your programs should remain intact and will be viewable on the HR that they were recorded on.

You should never get an HDD reformatted whether you put it back in/on the original HR or another one. All your programs should remain intact and will be viewable on the HR that they were recorded on.

Rich

Ok I surely hope so. here's another dilemma. I have 2 hrxx's. an HR21-700 and the new HR24-100. All the programs were recorded on the hr21-700. Now I want to copy them to the HR24-100. Do you then think the hr24 will format my original drive?

To play it safe I'll do a graceful power down of my original drive in the hr21-700. Then put the 3TB in the new hr24-100 and let it format. That alone should be interesting because it's a 3TB. If that goes smoothly then I'll do the gparted procedure and put the copy (3TB) in the HR24-100. If that doesn't work then I'll try it with a 2TB.

I can't do this until tomorrow, Thursday. The snow (weather) messed up my day today. Regards...

Ok I surely hope so. here's another dilemma. I have 2 hrxx's. an HR21-700 and the new HR24-100. All the programs were recorded on the hr21-700. Now I want to copy them to the HR24-100. Do you then think the hr24 will format my original drive?

No, it's never happened to me, but it has happened to others. Don't know what I do differently, but I always retain my original shows and all the other stuff.

To play it safe I'll do a graceful power down of my original drive in the hr21-700. Then put the 3TB in the new hr24-100 and let it format.

That, alone, should be interesting. Please let us know what happens.

Don't really know if I'd ever bother with a 3TB drive, but I can feel the lust building.

Won't work. Recordings are tied to the RID of the receiver they are recorded on. They won't transfer.

Failure then disaster. The failure is the Hitachi 3TB does not work. Won't even boot. When installed in an HR21-700 after a self check eventually you get a blue screen with error code 14-783. It gives you a box on that screen to reboot which I did and got the same error.

Failure in the hr24-100. Same exact thing happens but error code is slightly different. its 14-198 (but same message) having to do with the storage device have an initiazation problem or a critical error and to call D*.

Disaster. I went to copy my original hard drive to the 2TB. I did graceful shutdowns of both hard drives and then took them to my test computer. definitely hooked up the original on sata1 (sdb) and new drive on sata0 (sda). I ran gparted (latest ver) and it seemed to start and I went to bed. It said there were lot of files and directories.

I hooked up my original drive to the hr21 and it did a self check, then the step 1 of 2, then step 2, lots of almost there, 3 seconds etc. Then it got the satellite info and did the rebuilding schedular list (which took awhile about 6 minutes?). Then I got CNN but the remote didnt work. I couldnt do anything. I pressed the power button on the receiver and it rebooted and went into a loop of self checking etc. so I had no alternative except to pull the plug.

When it restarted and did the self check again it eventually came to the same screen failures the 3TB produced with an error 15-577. I am sick. All my NCAA games gone. I tried doing a copy again and got the super block error i guess because I cant do a graceful power down of my orig. drive. In addition gparted is showing that I'm only using <1.5 gb and there's 14gb free. So I assume its gone gone gone. I think I may have type uNmount at the end instead of umount. But I never saw it say success which I think its supposed to do. Yes I still have my health!!! Regards...

As far as the 3tb upgrade the only other thing to try is the WD 3tb which may differ from the hitachi somehow. the hitachi is sataIII. D* has been using sataII. who knows?? maybe when I become undepressed from my disaster I'll get one. they were out of stock. In addition most people are using western digital drives in the upgrades. Cant think of anything else. In fact I can't even think! regards...

As far as the 3tb upgrade the only other thing to try is the WD 3tb which may differ from the hitachi somehow. the hitachi is sataIII. D* has been using sataII. who knows?? maybe when I become undepressed from my disaster I'll get one. they were out of stock. In addition most people are using western digital drives in the upgrades. Cant think of anything else. In fact I can't even think! regards...

As far as the 3tb upgrade the only other thing to try is the WD 3tb which may differ from the hitachi somehow. the hitachi is sataIII. D* has been using sataII. who knows?? maybe when I become undepressed from my disaster I'll get one. they were out of stock. In addition most people are using western digital drives in the upgrades. Cant think of anything else. In fact I can't even think! regards...

At least you did try . So, let it go and your 'depression' will gone in a week.

I think I may try, just for the fun of it, the WD 3TB drive that has a 3.0gb/s transfer speed. I doubt that's the problem but again, no one knows. this is the drive Western Digital Caviar Green WD30EZRSDTL 3TB 64MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s. The price has come down on the web with free shipping so here we go again.

On another note: when the 3tb drive didnt work in the hr24 I put it in my computer. Only one 2.2tb partition was seen even with win 7_64. I use an Asus motherboard. Asus has a utility called disk unlocker which enables a user to use the entire drive. it made a second 746gb partition which windows set up as a separate drive letter. but for the life of me I could not delete that partition. I even used gparted which deletes it but it comes back. when i tried installing win 7 on it and went to delete that partition the delete button is grayed out. It seems to make it a DRIVE and not a partition. fyi..regards..